Re: your severed leg dilemma – in my experience, most Londoners (even the proud ones) are very philosophical about the level of filth in the river Thames. In order to fit in, I recommend fishing the leg out and stirring your tea with it, just to show how relaxed about its presence you are.

Re: Tea and Murder: I refer the both of you to the cut scenes in the old computer game “Command and Conquer: Red Alert”. The head of the Russian KGB uses tea as a vehicle for poison more than once against her enemies.

In reference to the severed leg floating by, if I were to have my tea by, say, the Rum River in Anoka (since I am so far from the Thames) so rudely interrupted, the proper Minnesotan response would be to make a remark upon the weather.Paul Weimer (@princejvstin) recently posted..Flowing Water in Monochrome

Seeing a severed leg floating down the Thames is frankly a relief compared to some of the other things it has in it. Nonetheless, one can’t allow guests to become embarrassed. The correct response is to turn to one’s guest, smiling, perhaps rolling one’s eyes just a little and remark: “Ha! For a moment there I thought that was a severed leg! I should get some new spectacles!” No matter how sharp the guest’s eyes may be, English etiquette does not permit contradiction and therefore you are both safe from any further conversational awkwardness.

Although I am unlikely to be sitting by the Thames with a proud resident of London town as a severed leg floats by, being that I am far more likely to be sitting upriver with the sort of deuced blokes introducing said limbs to London’s main waterway, I have considered your dilemma most carefully.

Unprepared as you were, I believe you were correct to say nothing, as the aforementioned deuced blokes do not take kindly to those who remark upon their work. For the next time you take tea on the terrace with your old friend, though, I have a recommendation to help you plan ahead.

Have Latimer standing by with a school of hungry piranha, to be released upon an unobtrusive signal by you. Although the poor fish are unlikely to survive long in the Thames, they would at least perish fully sated after consuming the limb, removing both the cause of your consternation and the evidence which could be used against my acquaintances.

Anyway, the severed leg dilemma. When you said you were taking tea on a terrace by the Thames, my first thought was that you must have been at the Houses of Parliament. Of course loss of a leg is not necessarily fatal, but against the possibility that a seat had become vacant, the first thing to do would be to enquire urgently whether or not it was marginal, in which case it could be a useful step to World Domination…

Looking forward to hearing your discussion next time with Sarah Pinborough. She seems to be publishing books faster than I can read them at present.

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